An easel can provide stable support and display of an artist's workpiece, such as a canvas, panel, or the like, during formation of his or her artwork. Typically, an artist's workpiece is fixed in one position on the easel, and the artist moves himself or herself relative to the position of the workpiece in order to work on all parts of it. Unfortunately, this can cause an artist to place himself or herself in an awkward posture to work on more distant regions on the fixed position workpiece. This awkward posture can be uncomfortable for the artist, and even impossible for an artist with limited mobility.
In addition, this awkward posture can hamper the artist's artistic style. One of the essential elements to artistic style is the manner in which the pencil stroke, brush stroke, or palette knife stroke is guided across the workpiece. An artist typically has a particular direction and a particular uniqueness in terms of his or her stroking that defines the style of that artist's work. When the workpiece is in a fixed position on a conventional easel, the artist may not be able to guide his or her tools in a manner conducive to the artist's desired style.
Accordingly, some artists are compelled to reposition their workpieces in order to appropriately guide their tools across the workpiece. Such an artist is faced with the task of removing the workpiece from the easel to reposition it. Manual repositioning of an artwork can be both time consuming and frustrating for the artist. Moreover, manual repositioning of the artwork still may not place it in the best position for accommodating the artist's particular stroke. More critically, in the process of handling the workpiece to reposition it on a conventional easel, an artwork can be damaged by dropping, scratching, or in some way adversely affecting the workpiece. Obviously, any resulting damage to the artwork is a highly undesirable situation for the artist.
Some artists stretch their own canvasses. In order to do so, they stretch a canvas over a stretcher, a wooden frame, and tack or staple the edge of the canvas to the stretcher. It can be difficult to hold the wooden stretcher square while applying the canvas to the stretcher. Consequently, a painting formed on a canvas attached to an out of square stretcher can be difficult or impossible to appropriately fit into a frame once the painting is completed by the artist.